In this episode, Ben and Sawyer break down the art of time efficient training. They explore how to get the most muscle building stimulus with the least time investment by dialing in exercise selection, intensity, and smart programming.
You’ll learn the difference between maintenance and growth volume, how to strategically use supersets, circuits, myo-reps, and drop sets, and when pre-exhaust techniques can actually save your workout.
They also discuss how to prioritize muscle groups, manage fatigue, and keep training enjoyable, even with a busy schedule. This one’s packed with practical takeaways for anyone looking to train smarter, not longer.
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Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben.
[Sawyer]And I’m Sawyer.
[Ben]And welcome to today’s episode. So today, Sawyer and I are going to be talking about time efficient training, which I think is going to be relevant to a lot of folks out there because we all got stuff to do, right? We got jobs, some of us have families to take care of, pets, other responsibilities, obligations.
There’s only so much time in the day. But as we know, it’s important to make fitness and our health a priority. And we wanna make sure that we’re doing all that we can in order to make that so.
But I think also people wonder, what is the minimum amount that I need to do in order to get those benefits? What is, you know, is doing more always better? These are questions that people have.
So we’re gonna talk about that today. We’re gonna talk about how to keep your training efficient and effective. But before we get into that, Sawyer, what’s new with you, buddy?
It’s been a little while since we caught up.
[Sawyer]Man, I’m just getting over a cold right now. And so sorry to everybody if I sound a little groggy or a little bit like lower register than I usually am. But yeah, just getting over this cold and finishing up the van.
So we’re fixing up the van, just sell it, making it all pretty. And what else is going on in my world? Playing way too many video games lately, I’ll be honest.
I feel like when I’m sick, I’m just like, oh, it’s the perfect excuse to just be a little kid again or something. And I’m kind of bored of them now, so.
[Ben]Hey, it’s good to have phases of stuff because you will naturally get bored of things, I think. And it’s nice to have different cycles. So if you haven’t played video games in a while, you play them a little bit.
You get that kind of itch scratched and then you go back to how things are. I think it’s okay to kind of ebb and flow with that.
[Sawyer]Yeah, no, it’s true. It’s nice to like have the freedom to do that. And I’m very grateful for having a lifestyle that’s a little more flexible and I don’t have to be on all the time.
And so I can, if I have a little break, I can take a little break and do, like Giacomo’s got like a little gaming station. He knows what’s up. But yeah, it’s just one of those things where it’s nice to feel like you can just kind of do whatever you feel like in a moment.
And like, you can totally direct your attention to something that’s not all that serious. And then after you do that, I think you feel like you have more, at least I do, feel like I have more capacity for stuff that I don’t really feel like doing at that particular moment. Cause I’ve already done a bunch of stuff that I felt like, you know, I got to do what I wanted.
So now I can, I don’t know. So for me, it’s like a big part of, I mean, I guess not just gaming in general, but like downtime in general is really important for me to feel like I, cause I think a lot of people assume that I just have like a ton of discipline and I just make myself do things. But you already know, like with cardio and stuff, I struggle to get cardio in.
I struggle to do stuff I don’t like. I actually like lifting, so that’s helpful. But even lifting, if I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff I don’t love lately, man, it’s hard to get myself to get stuff in and like do extra or do, I don’t know, more stuff that is like hard because I’ve just been doing too much hard stuff lately and it starts to feel like it just kinda weighs down on you.
Total aside, but I’m just trying to vent about like, I feel like it’s been good to get to rest while I’ve been sick, especially over the longer weekend and then come back and feel like, okay, I can get this done. I can get going, you know.
[Ben]Whenever I’m talking to people about kind of the big pillars, training, nutrition, sleep, I often throw stress management in there and I think stress management is different for everyone. So sometimes I’ll mention something like mindfulness or having a way to deal with stressful situations when they come up, whatever that is. But I also usually mention that it doesn’t have to be something like meditation.
It can be something where whatever it is, you’re fully present and you’re immersed in that thing and that’s time for yourself and I think that’s really important. Even if it’s just carving out, maybe some days you only have five or 10 minutes to yourself that day, but that’s important to at least carve that out for yourself so you can take that time to really, maybe look inward, but maybe also just do something that you enjoy. Take a little bit of the pressure off your plate.
I think it’s important to have that. So whatever that looks like for you, if it’s reading a book or calling a friend or just watching five or 10 minutes of your favorite TV show, whatever it is that allows you to kind of relax and unwind and de-stress, I think it’s important to try to build that into your day as much as you can.
[Sawyer]I think it’s, yeah, it’s a good point and it’s not just for the end of the day either. Like if you have, it’s so easy to be like, oh, I just wanna get everything done in one big go and then at the end of the day you do the stuff you like and I typically fall into that pattern too, but it’s good to have little bits of it too because if you don’t do it at all and then you have like an obligation later or I don’t know, you just don’t have time, like a big chunk at the end of the day, it can feel like, well, when do I get that time? So if you’re someone who’s like a shift worker or you’re just busy around the clock, I think you gotta find pockets for it, you know?
[Ben]So yeah, it’s good advice. I think something I was also thinking about with the video games that I was gonna make a joke about but didn’t fit it in there was taking your mind off the fact that you’re hungry and tired as well, kind of nearing the end of this cut.
[Sawyer]The end of the day.
[Ben]Just being busy, being busy helps a lot when you’re dieting and not thinking about food.
[Sawyer]You’re right, man. And being, like even when I have food and I would normally inhale it, if I’m playing a game while I’m doing it and then I can only eat at breaks, like if I’m playing an online game where I can’t pause it or anything, I can only eat when it’s a break time or in between games. And so it forces me to slow down my eating too.
So it’s kind of like, yeah, it’s a little bit of a hack with that where I’m like, okay, I’m not just inhaling my food now, I have to take breaks in between bites and stuff, which is really important for me because I can eat really fast.
[Ben]I find that I go through phases with eating routines where sometimes I’m like, I just want to be present like with my food and enjoy my meal and like watch something. Other times I get into more of a habit of doing work while I’m eating. It’s pretty rare that I’ve tried it before.
It’s really hard for me to just like by myself, sit down with food, nothing else. No podcast on, no video on, no distractions and just eat. But I do sometimes think that it can be helpful for people depending on what it is that they’re working on, if it’s chewing their food better or if it’s eating more slowly.
But there are other ways that you can kind of do that. So before we go down that rabbit hole, maybe we should talk about the topic today, which is time efficient training and how to do that. So we can kind of see where this takes us.
But the first thing that I think about when I think about time efficient training is just what is kind of that minimum effective dose that we need for strength training, resistance training that is going to get us most of the benefits of that thing? How do you start thinking about that when you’re writing a program for someone?
[Sawyer]Yeah, good question. So I think it starts with exercise selection and intensity. I think if those things are kind of understood well and they have good quality of those things, then volume comes after.
Because I think a lot of times when people start programming, they don’t bother to take the time to see if somebody knows how to really execute an exercise really intensely or bother to pick the kind of exercises that are gonna be more potent than less. Especially if a client tells you like, hey, I’m really limited on time. That’s your cue to know you really have to pick the most time efficient exercises, the most bang for your bucket type exercises.
Even if they’re not the easiest to do and they’re a little bit uncomfortable, it can be the thing that keeps the client making progress even though they have condensed timelines. So I think that has to come first because you can obviously work in a client’s preferences in terms of what exercises they like, but you can also make an argument for if we do this exercise, you might only need two versus if we do this one, we might need more like three or four. And also depending on the intensity they use, I think can make a big difference.
So once you kind of establish that with the client, like where they’re comfortable being on those spectrums, then I think the volume can start to be manipulated. But I think for maintenance volume, for me, I typically say anywhere from like one to four sets per muscle group per week could be a maintenance dose depending on those things like I was saying, like how intense are you pushing those sets and what’s the exercise selection you’re using. Typically leaning towards the more length and bias movements being more potent in my opinion.
So like a split squat versus a hip thrust, I would say a split squat is probably just more potent with one set than a hip thrust is. And maybe we should explain that a little bit more before we move on. I don’t know, what do you think?
[Ben]Sure, yeah, I think we can probably elaborate on some of the terms that we’re gonna be using for the rest of the podcast just so the listeners have an idea of what we’re talking about because everyone is coming from a different place. So when we talk about volume, we’re talking about number of sets in the gym that we’re doing. So we often break that down by number of sets per body part.
Now it can get a little bit confusing when you start talking about, yeah, per week. And it can be a little bit confusing when we start talking about compound exercises. Hey, if I’m doing a bench press or a squat, what is the, am I counting that for bench press?
Am I counting that for chest? Well, my shoulders and my triceps are gonna be a little bit involved. What about with the squat?
Okay, well, my glutes and my adductors are still gonna be involved even if I’m mostly using my quads or whatever it is. Usually when we’re talking about sets per muscle per week, there’s a couple different ways that people will count this. Sometimes they’ll think about whatever the primary mover is for that exercise.
And then they might count the other muscles that are involved as maybe getting a half a set each. But honestly, I think sometimes that just, it gets a little bit convoluted and complicated. So usually I’ll just focus on what is really the main muscle that you’re trying to target with that exercise?
If you can kind of think about that when you’re executing a lift, I think that will kind of help clarify the way that you execute it, what you’re trying to get out of it. And when we’re thinking about like Sawyer said, kind of a minimum effective volume, what it really is is a minimum effective dosage of stimulus. And so stimulus, okay, what is that?
What is stimulus? Stimulus is just, we’re trying to direct a certain amount of stress to an area. So a certain amount of stress to a muscle group, to our chest, to our glutes, to our biceps, whatever it is.
Because that stress, if you think about doing a really hard set and you’re getting close to failure and you’re really, you know, the reps are slowing down, you’re really grinding, the muscle’s burning and aching, it’s getting sore in the days afterwards, you can tell that you worked it, right? So you provided a stimulus, you provided a stress that it now has to adapt to and recover and then repair. And you go into the gym again and you try to do a little bit more if you can.
And so that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about some of these terms like volume and like stimulus. Did you want to add a little bit to that?
[Sawyer]Yeah, I think it’s easy to get lost in the sauce of this stuff a little bit and make sure we’re explaining ourselves the way through. Yeah, basically I think that it comes down to if you can maintain performance with a couple of sets per week, then you’re probably picking a pretty good amount of dosage. I like that term dosage more than volume because volume is a factor, but it’s not the only thing.
Like we said, exercise selection matters, intensity matter. And when we say intensity, we mean proximity to failure. How really slow are your reps getting towards the end of sets?
So if you’re having a high degree of stress being induced, mechanical tension going through a muscle group or muscle fibers, and you’re noticing like, wow, I can really maintain my strength with like two sets per week, like then you’re at maintenance. Like by definition, you’ve achieved maintenance. And so you might be able to make progress with just like four sets per week on some exercises with really good intensity.
So I think it’s more specific. I think it’s a little bit reductionist to talk just like purely in terms of volume, because there’s just such a big difference in terms of like execution and exercise selection, I think are probably the biggest variables there. And then also level of advancement, right?
Like if somebody has really, really well-developed glutes and they’re trying to make progress, I would probably prescribe for them more than four sets per week. But somebody who’s just starting out and is getting accustomed to the kind of intensities that I’m looking for, that we can grow into the future with, I’ll probably give them a lower dose to start. And that way they can really have the space, like they know they only have this few sets and they can really put the effort into it.
So I think there’s also some psychological factors that come into play with the amount of volume you prescribe to. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think you have to just pay attention to, so much of this is just an iterative process, right? It’s trial and error.
And so if you find that like for you, you just can’t seem to summon the enthusiasm to do four sets of split squats per week, no matter what you do, then it’s a moot point. You don’t need to worry about picking the most length and bias exercise and the most highest intensity, because it’s not something that’s gonna stick around for you. But I think in an ideal world, you would pick something like that, a length and bias, especially if you’re really short on time.
You pick a length and bias movement, you do it with high intensity. And if you’re looking to just maintain, I’d say somewhere between one and four sets per week is probably plenty and you can just trial and error that.
[Ben]So I’m gonna give some more context for your listeners. So when Sawyer is talking about length and bias exercises, what he’s talking about is exercises where a muscle is being challenged most when it is in a stretched position. So if you think about at the bottom of a bicep curl, or when you’re kind of sitting into a squat, those would be examples of a muscle being under stretch and picking exercises where it’s hardest at that position where the muscle is under stretch, because there’s been a decent amount of research that’s showing that a full range of motion is going to be important for muscle growth, but also especially focusing on that kind of position where the muscle is being stretched seems to be important. So that’s something that we wanna be mindful of.
And really what we’re thinking about is what are we getting on a set by set basis for a certain muscle group? So things that might increase the amount of stress that a muscle undertakes is the amount of sets that we’re doing, the intensity, the way that we’re executing it. So if we’re executing it with good technique, that’s going to increase the amount of stress or stimulus that we’re putting on that muscle group.
So these are all factors that are going to impact that and increase or decrease the dose. So we can use different exercises, we can use different intensities, we can improve our technique, and these are all ways that we can get more stimulus and more stress. So those are all factors that can influence kind of the least amount that we need to still make progress.
So there’s maintenance volume, which is just we’re maintaining our strength. And when you’re assessing this, it might take a couple of weeks and probably months to really assess that this is what’s the case because your performance is gonna fluctuate, you know, workout to workout, week to week, and that’s fine. So you might seem like you’re kind of going back a workout, but you know, really the next workout, you go back to where you were, maybe you even add a rep or something like that.
So it can take some time, but yeah, you know, I think six to 10 sets per week is a good starting place for beginners in terms of growing. So then if you think about reducing that for just kind of maintaining where you’re at, you could probably do a third of what you’re doing when you’re growing to really maintain what you’re doing, at least what some of the research says. So that’s really just talking about the minimum amount of work that we do.
And the reason why this ties into time-saving techniques is just if you know that you don’t need to do as many sets in the gym over the course of the week, that could reduce the number of days that you’re in the gym from, you know, three, four, five days per week to once or twice a week. If you need to either have a time where your focus is just maintaining, or even if your focus is still making progress, you know, you can still reduce the amount of time that you’re in the gym. So maybe you’re in the gym three times a week for an hour, you might be able to now reduce that to three times a week for a half an hour and still make progress, but just at a slower rate perhaps than what you were doing before.
But we can also talk about ways that you can keep your, you know, if you need to, let’s say your workouts are capped at an hour, and that’s not changing, but you’re finding that you need to increase the amount of work that you’re doing in a given time period, we’re also gonna talk about ways that you can do that, ways that you can add more while still keeping it, you know, the same time period, which is the same thing really as when you think about it, keeping the work the same, but reducing the time. It’s, you know, the same thing, but perhaps just different goals, so.
[Sawyer]Yeah, before we move on to that, I do wanna say, or like Honorable mentioned for like specialization programs, because there are gonna be people, and usually this is reserved for like more quote unquote advanced or like intermediate athletes who wanna just work on certain muscle groups and leave others at maintenance. You can just manipulate your volumes so that you are growing some muscles while leaving others alone. And that can be a really effective thing, especially even if you’re not advanced, but you just care about certain muscles more than others, and you have a very limited timeframe to work on things, I think it’s totally legit.
You don’t need to work on everything at the same time, at the same pace, just because like, you don’t wanna be laughed at for not working legs enough or whatever. You could do that stuff later. In fact, I don’t know anybody who has built their physique, like everything at the same time, like came up at the same rate, because inevitably, you know, what you care about more is probably gonna come to the forefront of your training.
The other stuff is maybe get crowded out or the quality won’t be as high because maybe it comes later in the workouts. So I think it’s okay to have a degree of like difference in how quality and how much volume you put into certain muscle groups in certain times. Just make sure to reevaluate every so often and think, okay, do I feel like everything that I’m trying to improve is improving?
Or do I need to change my priorities up periodically to make sure everything is like happening the way I want to? But yeah, the truth is, if you’re limited on time and energy, which we all are, and you’re especially feeling it while trying to work on everything at the same time, you can just put a few muscle groups at the forefront and say, all right, I’m gonna really focus on these right now. And then maybe later I’ll cycle and do a different subset of, you know, muscle groups that I’m trying to bring up.
And that can help you save some time too. Because basically what I’m saying is you put the other ones at maintenance or near it, and some of the ones that you wanna focus on a little bit above that and just say, these are the highlights right now for me. And then in a couple months, I’ll put those other ones atop the chart.
[Ben]Great point. And so I think kind of finishing up this section, moving on to kind of just give some practical takeaways for people. If you are looking to save time in the gym, you wanna get the most out of the least.
And let’s say you wanna grow everything equally. We’re looking at probably starting around six to 10 sets per muscle group per week. Now, if you care about certain muscle groups more than others, and you’re very time limited, putting the ones that are most important, maybe in that range, and then focusing on the ones that are less important, I should say, putting less focus on the ones that are not as important, maybe one to four sets per week for those muscle groups.
And if you’re just trying to maintain everything, you’re not worried about growing or progressing at the maximum rate, you’re just trying to maintain, one to four sets is a good range for that. So maintenance, one to four, growth. Six to 10.
[Sawyer]Yeah, I was sorry, go ahead and finish.
[Ben]And I was just gonna say, again, it can be muscle specific or it can be general, applying that number of sets per week in the gym to those muscle groups. And then assessing on an individual basis over time, given months of looking back and seeing kind of what the data is telling you. If certain muscle groups, if you’d expect that they maybe wouldn’t be growing, but they are, great, you don’t need to do anything.
If there’s certain muscle groups that you want it to be growing, but they’re not, if you have time and capacity to add a little bit more, that’s probably the time to do that. If stress is still pretty high, then maybe you even need to put more muscle groups on maintenance and keep those ones that are important to you in that kind of growth zone for a number of sets. So, go ahead.
[Sawyer]Yeah, and then just like a final point is like, if you A, don’t really care or want a muscle to atrophy, you can put a muscle at zero. Like you don’t have to train your forearms or your neck or your upper traps if you don’t want to. The other thing is that if your daily life involves just a lot of that muscles activity, you could probably put that at zero and maybe even still see growth or at least maintenance.
Like calves is one that a lot of people don’t need to program for if they do a lot of walking, especially uphill walking and things like that. You got to figure it out.
[Ben]Good point. And if, let’s say like you don’t really care that much about your arms, but you train them through compound lifts, they’re probably gonna maintain just fine, even if they’re not gonna grow their best. If you’re not doing curls or push downs, you’re not doing isolations for those, but you’re doing bench press and you’re doing pull-ups, you’ll probably maintain them just fine.
So that’s kind of another thing to know when you’re considering saving time. So, okay, I think it might make sense to move on to actually in the gym, talking about some ways that we can save time. I know that we’re both a big fan of antagonistic supersets.
So maybe we can talk a little bit about those. We could also talk about paired supersets and kind of the difference between those two things, cause they’re pretty similar, but not exactly the same. So how often do you find yourself programming those for folks and does it differ when people are training at a commercial gym versus a home gym?
I’m curious to know what you do.
[Sawyer]Well, it’s mostly a time-saving technique for me. I would prefer straight sets if I had the option or if time is unlimited and whatever. But also I’ll put it in when somebody tells me like, hey, these muscles aren’t really priority for me, I’ll tend to put them into supersets cause I’m like, all right, well, what am I making them take two, three minutes of rest and do all this stuff for if they’re not really caring about making it like the best quality ever?
So I think supersets, it’s a little bit of a trade-off because you are trading some recovery capacity for time-saving. Not a ton, especially in the case of antagonist supersets, which just means that you’re working muscle groups that kind of oppose each other. So biceps, triceps, chest, back, whatever.
So they’re not really interfering with each other muscularly, but at least a little bit cardiovascularly and maybe like just endurance, central nervous system fatigue wise, a little bit of overlap. And so it’s probably not gonna be as quality and you’re not gonna be able to push quite as hard as a, and maybe you can push back on this, that’s totally fine. But quite as hard as like a straight set where you’re resting two, three minutes in between sets.
Some people argue that like you totally can. I personally find there’s just maybe my cardio is not that great, I don’t know. But I don’t push as hard on supersets, but it’s also a personal preference thing, right?
Sometimes people really enjoy the fact that they’re like getting their blood moving and they’re like in the zone and they don’t have as much rest time. And maybe that motivates them to push harder. I personally prefer straight sets, so that’s my bias.
But at the end of the day, I think I typically will program straight sets unless somebody tells me, hey, I’m very limited on time and or I don’t care as much about these muscle groups. So I’ll try to pair them up in a way that doesn’t interfere. And usually I’ll do that for more isolations than anything because isolations just have such low fatigue that it’s usually pretty fine to pair them in.
And I don’t see a drop off in quality all that often.
[Ben]So yeah, I don’t know, what are your thoughts on that? I think, like you said, it depends on the individual. For people who are coming to me with a cardio background, I have no reservations about it whatsoever because I think they, just in my experience seeing it, they tend to handle that really well.
And they like that because they’re not used to like the sitting around all the time in between sets.
[Sawyer]Some people just hate that.
[Ben]Some people just like hate waiting between sets. So for those people, especially if they’re training in a home gym environment and they can easily kind of set it up in terms of pairing things together, then I’m gonna put antagonistic supersets in there. So like you said, a press and a pull, you know, a curl and a push down.
But it doesn’t even have to be antagonistic. You can pair two kind of random things. So you could pair like calf raises with lateral raises because they’re not really good at all.
[Sawyer]I do that a lot, I do that a lot.
[Ben]Yeah, so that’s kind of another thing that you can do. There’s some practical considerations. So if you’re in the gym and you’re running back and forth across the gym between two different machines, like some people don’t love that.
Sometimes it can feel weird trying to take up two machines at one time. But there are some ways to get around this. Like you can bring a pair of dumbbells over to a machine that you’re using.
Nobody cares, that’s an easy way to do that. You could set up a superset that uses the same piece of equipment. So if you’ve got a cable tower, you can do a push down with a curl and you can just move the thing up and down in order to do that.
Or even easier, you could do like a curl and overhead extension. You can just leave the cable where it is. So whenever I’m programming supersets for somebody, I’m thinking about the practical implications of it.
So here’s another one. If they’re at home and they’re using a bench, I might not do an exercise where it’s like maybe it’s an incline bench press and a chest supported row, just because then if they’re constantly having to move the bench back and forth, sometimes that can be a little annoying. So sometimes I’ll make it so it’s two different pieces of equipment and they’re just moving back and forth and they don’t have to change the setup.
So just like small things that you can kind of keep in mind with that. I also don’t usually love, I do it sometimes because it’s just the only way that I can kind of work the programming, but I don’t also doing unilateral exercises and then pairing that with something else. So if you’re doing left leg, right leg, and then you’re doing an upper body lift, it can just take a while to work through it.
Whereas usually with the good thing about using unilaterals, you can kind of just go back and forth. Lower body split squats, you’re probably gonna have to rest in between them. But sometimes just doing a one arm pull down or a one arm curl, you can kind of just alternate back and forth because the set takes up enough time.
You rest a little bit, you grab a sip of your water, you’re ready to go again and just switch limbs back and forth. Especially if it’s something like a lateral raise or it’s just not something that you need a ton of rest time for. That would be something that I would consider doing.
But I think, yeah, usually if somebody cardiovascularly fit, I think it can work well. You don’t have to just go back and forth immediately. Back, back, back, back, back.
You can give it 30, 60 seconds rest in between. Whereas usually we’re saying, rest at least 90 seconds between sets for straight sets. I would usually encourage people two to three minutes to really rest between straight sets.
I think if somebody is newer to the gym and they’re still trying to dial in their intensity and their focus and their technique, I might shy away from it just because I really want them to put their focus on one thing that they’re doing at a time and not really feel like they’re running around between a million different things. But again, it’s not something that I’ll never program for beginners. So yeah, just putting exercises back to back where you’re not using the same muscle group because that’s gonna limit the amount of load that you can use for those muscle groups.
And that’s the one thing that we wanna try to keep as much as we can is the load that we’re using for exercises. So that’s a little bit about supersets and how you might use them. I think, it looked like you might wanna say something about that.
[Sawyer]I have like three, four things, but I’m probably gonna forget half of them. The first one, I really like how you said that because I think it makes a lot of sense in certain contexts. Like yeah, people who have really good cardiovascular fitness, people who are shorter on time, there’s just certain situations that make a lot of sense to program them.
I personally tend to put them in places where I don’t find them very fatiguing. Like I often pair calf raises with ab training, for example, or certain shoulder movements together just because it just, it doesn’t seem, it has no, virtually no overlap and very low fatigue. So I’m just like, all right, well, I just wanna save some time here.
But it’s funny how my personal bias enters into things because I’m always thinking, okay, this is really fatiguing. And I get really fatigued by this. And I also like to give myself a lot of rest.
So if I’m doing like, especially compound leg exercises, I’m just shying away from supersets with those in general, unless somebody specifically says, hey, I’m really bored and this feels like, and I see their set quality really good. And they’re like, yeah, I just don’t need to rest that long. I’m like, wow, okay.
You can handle supersets, I guess. But for most people, I’m defaulting to, hey, those deadlifts or those squats are really hard. I’m probably not gonna pair them with anything.
[Ben]Go ahead. So there are certain exercises that I won’t usually do it for. Squats and deadlifts would be some of the ones that I would definitely put in that category just because I want them, their focus to be on that exercise.
After a hard set of squats or deadlifts, I’m sorry, but you’re not gonna be doing, you’re not gonna be doing much else other than catching your breath and getting some water. Yeah, maybe some calf raises, maybe. Maybe, maybe some calf raises.
But even then, it’s just like the psychological focus for a set is kind of pooped after doing some squats or deadlifts. And sometimes even just like, I’ve thought about programming before. Okay, you’re doing, sometimes people will program this.
You’re doing a bench press superset with like a bent over row. I still think the intensity needed for both of those compound lifts probably doesn’t make sense for there to be a superset there. So it really just does depend on the exercises.
And usually the less compounded it is in nature, the more isolation, the less like, I guess, like you said, kind of psychologically amped up you need to be for that lift probably makes sense to do it. I’ll let you go now. That was just all I wanted to say.
[Sawyer]No, there’s so much I could talk about this, but it’s, I mean, I guess that’s why we’re doing podcast format, right? I think one thing I’m realizing is that I think I program supersets after the fact because I’m knowing, I know, okay, this feels like a lot of sets for one workout. And if somebody is gonna fit it into this time window they told me they have, then I’ll look for the opportunities to put supersets in.
If they, otherwise my default is like straight sets. Cause I’m like, I just feel like you’re gonna get the best quality there and you’re gonna get to be able to focus on what you want. But then again, there’s certain exercises that are so like not fatiguing, like calf raises and stuff that I’m just like, if we have a ton of volume on a certain day, I’m gonna just be trying to fit in supersets where I can.
The other thing is that I, man, there’s so much stuff. I feel like I’m forgetting. The other thing is like, I think that I tend to avoid them in general from my personal training because I like giving myself, I like how you’re saying like psychologically amped up.
I like to come down. Like I like my workout to be like up and down. I don’t like it to be up, up, up the whole time.
I like to like feel the come down after a set and like relax and then focus on this next set. And if I have the time to do that, I usually allow myself like two hours in the gym. Even if I don’t use it, I’m like showing up with two hours to kill.
Like I said, part of my personality type is like I like having that downtime and that extra space. And so this is just a luxury that I afford myself is like I like to give myself extra training time. But if somebody tells me, hey, I got about this long to work out, I’m gonna make sure that the workout can be done in that amount of time.
And then I’m gonna put in supersets where I think is necessary. Usually more upper body movements than anything, but yeah, I guess I’ll leave it there.
[Ben]Before I move on to other techniques. So I wanna talk about drop sets. I wanna talk about rest pause and my reps.
And those can all kind of be similar ways of saving time. I did wanna talk about same muscle supersets or doing exercises back to back that involve the same muscle group or even just doing, this wouldn’t even be a superset, but just putting a certain kind of exercise first. I’m gonna give an example.
It’s gonna be easier to talk about that way. So let’s say that you are limited on time and you’re trying to get a really good workout in for, I guess I’ll use chest for this example. So this also can apply if you are in a scenario where you don’t have access to a lot of weight.
So let’s say you’re going on a cruise ship and you’re using the gym that they have there or you’re traveling and it’s a hotel gym. This is another kind of good application for that. But if you’re trying to get a lot of work in in a short period of time, something you could do is you could set up a bench.
You could do like a dumbbell fly superset with a pushup. And that’s gonna toast your chest pretty quickly. You kind of go back and forth.
Maybe you do three sets of each of those. That could take you five minutes and your chest is probably gonna be pretty toast after that. If you have access to like a leg extension, this is an example where it’s saving time.
So let’s say that you’re a really strong squatter. Maybe you’re squatting three or four plates for reps on a barbell squat. Very, very strong.
That might take a lot of time to warm up on. So if you’re limited on time, something that you could do is you could put a leg extension before you go and do your squats. You hop on the leg extension.
You do a couple of warmup sets. You kind of go down with the selectorized and then you do your two or three sets on the leg extension. Probably don’t have to rest as long as you would for squats.
Then you hop over and you do squats. You might only be squatting two plates or two and a half plates or something like that. And that’s gonna take a lot less time to warm up because your quads are already warm from doing the leg extensions.
You’re not gonna be able to use as much weight. So that’s kind of another thing that you can do if you’re short on time is to put an isolation before a compound. Sometimes people will call that pre-exhaust or pre-fatigue, especially if that compound lift would take a lot of time to warm up for because you’re using a lot of weight or you just need to get those muscles warm.
So sometimes putting an isolation before a compound in those scenarios can be useful. But I would say if you have the time, usually put compounds before isolations because you’re just gonna be able to use more load. And usually we want to use as much load as we can in a safe way that is specific for that muscle group or movement pattern.
[Sawyer]Yeah, and the reason for that is because we know that the primary driver of hypertrophy is mechanical tension, meaning that we’re putting more and more tension. I often analogize this to a rubber band. You’re putting more and more weight into that rubber band, more and more pull on it.
And you’re kind of signaling to that rubber band, like, hey, you need to grow stronger. That’s the cool thing about our muscles is that they’re not just getting worn out and not coming back stronger. They actually adapt to that stress.
And they say, oh, I need to get stronger if I’m gonna get pulled on this hard all the time. So yeah, so we don’t want to do things typically that reduce training load or volume, meaning we’re not trying to do things that like, I don’t know, I’m not a huge fan of like drop sets, for example, maybe this is a good transition because then you’re kind of encouraging sub-maximal loading in some ways. But again, it can be a good way to bypass some kind of limitations and kind of induce stress and get more volume in in a shorter amount of time.
I don’t know, what are your thoughts on drop sets?
[Ben]I definitely program them a lot less and use them in my own training a lot less than I used to. I prefer my reps slash rest pause, which I can talk about in a second. So a drop set for anyone who’s unaware is you’ll do your normal set with a given weight.
Maybe you’ll leave like one or two reps in the tank, but you could use them, you know, taking them to failure. Oftentimes it’s done like maybe on the last set of an exercise or as a way to save time. So you’ll do that set, the regular set, and then you will, you know, whether it’s a leg press and you have some plates on and you’re taking a plate off for each side, or the easiest way to do it is if it’s a pin loaded machine, you just move it down, you know, one or two on the stack or however many make sense.
And there’s, you know, there’s different ways you could do it. So let’s say your working set was eight to 12 reps. If you only drop it down one, you know, one on the pin, or you only take off one plate on the leg press, you’re probably only gonna be able to get like a couple reps with that weight because it’s pretty close to what you were just using.
So some people will do it where they’re just going down one increment every time, whatever that is. Again, in this example, you know, taking a plate off the leg press or, you know, moving down one on the stack. Some people will try to do it where they’re keeping the rep range the same.
So in that case, you might have to take a couple plates off or move it a couple up the stack. And so now you’re doing eight to 12, but it’s with a lighter load because you’re already, you know, your muscles are already fatigued. They haven’t recovered from that last set.
And you might do that, you know, you could do that one time or you could maybe do that a couple of subsequent times. Usually again, it’s reserved for like maybe the last set for a given muscle group on a day because then by doing it, you’re not limiting the load that you’re using for future exercises. And I think that’s what you’re talking about, you know, with the mechanical tension thing.
So I think that would probably be the time that I would use it is on your last exercise or your last set for a given exercise because it can also be a little bit difficult to track and really gauge progress because maybe you’re resting a little bit more or less in between those little drop sets. So usually the way people do drop sets is like they’ll give themselves maybe 10 seconds rest between each of those sets and then, you know, go again and go again and go again. So that’s drop sets.
So you’re reducing the load each time that you do a quote unquote drop. I mean, you’re, you know, keeping that proximity to failure the same for that exercise. And usually it’s used for stuff that’s more isolation.
I mean, you can, again, you could do it on like a leg press but you usually don’t wanna do it on something where you’re having to brace. So you wouldn’t ever really do it on like a deadlift or like a barbell squat or something like that. It just wouldn’t make sense because you’d probably just like instantly fail the next drop that you tried to do.
Yeah.
[Sawyer]Also the rest of your workout would be pretty tanked. Like they’re pretty exhausting. And not only that, but it’s with submaximal load.
So like you’re, you just know, you know you could do more if you just rested. And that’s what I’m saying about the tension kind of relationship. If we wanna maximize that, we wanna give you breaks in between so that you can come back almost as fresh as you were for that last set.
So it does make the most sense on like a last set for a muscle group in a workout because it’s like, well, if I’m gonna be resting this muscle group for like three days, you know, soon, I might as well get as much as I can out of this last set. Like that’s fine. I don’t see any problem with that.
But I think, yeah, you’re right. It can be challenging to gauge progress with those, but also, yeah, it can tank your performance on subsequent sets. And like, you might have to go lighter than you otherwise would.
And then therefore have less tension in the muscle simply because your recovery just isn’t able to keep up with how much you’re trying to do in a short amount of time. So I think, yeah, I don’t really like drop sets as much as I used to. Agreed.
Because I used to chase like the pump, you know, it used to feel really good. Like you do drop sets and you’re like, oh my God, my muscle is like burning and it’s like, you know, pulsating, it’s crazy. But, and as good as that feels, it’s just not gonna be the best type of volume to incorporate.
But again, certain limited situations, you’re limited on weight, you’re limited on time. It can make sense to just like push yourself in some way. But I think ideally we would do more like straight sets or even antagonistic super sets where we’re not getting that interference with how much you can use the next set and how your recovery is over the next couple of minutes.
So, yeah.
[Ben]I think sometimes, again, coming back to someone’s psychology, if they really like leaving the gym, feeling like, you know, I got this like burnout set done and I, you know, they like walking away with like a pump and they feel like, oh wow, like, you know, they feel good, they look good. Then sometimes throwing it in there for somebody, it’s, you know, it’s not gonna like really hurt them. So putting it at the end, like sometimes, you know, giving someone, you know, give a dog a bone sort of thing.
That is sometimes that I use them. Did you wanna say something?
[Sawyer]I was just gonna say, psychologically it’s true. Getting a pump is fricking amazing. Like I, you know, being in a cut, I haven’t been getting many pumps lately.
It’s not intense ones. And after Thanksgiving dinner and I went to the gym the next day and I was like, man, I forgot how good this shit feels. And I was like, you know, loving that feeling.
And it was just kind of a reminder. But, and it makes you wanna push harder. I do like the idea of like, yeah, doing a drop set for your last set, totally fine as a burnout.
I just don’t think it would be good to do that like for every set in a workout.
[Ben]So I think it might make sense to talk about myo reps slash rest pause training. And this is a different intensity technique that I prefer much, much more now. Again, I don’t really program it that often for people that I’m working with.
I use it a lot in my own training for time saving just because I’m one of those cases where I need to get a lot of volume in. So I don’t wanna be in the gym for three hours doing straight sets. I’d rather use some of these intensity techniques.
And even with these intensity techniques, you know, my upper body days or mostly upper body days are still like almost two hours and I’m using drop sets or I’m using my reps for like eight out of 10 of my exercises that I’m doing. So it’s, I’ve definitely, this is the right now, the last like probably six months or so has been the time that I’ve used them the most. I mean, I have seen some good benefits from them.
I don’t think they’re not necessarily better than straight sets, they’re just a different way of doing them. So when I think about any of these techniques, drop sets, my reps, rest pause, I would usually count these sets as about half of a set of a straight set. So let’s say you’re gonna do three straight sets if you wanted to equate that.
As with these, I’ve been talking about with these techniques, you have your kind of one intro or like lead in set, your one regular set, and then you follow that up with a couple of drops or you follow that up with a couple rest pause sets that I’m gonna talk about. So let’s say you do one regular straight set and then you do four drops after that, that would count as three sets because those four drops are really equal to like two straight sets. So I would count that as three sets.
So just when you’re thinking about kind of equating volume and equating stimulus, again, we’re really talking about equating dosage of stimulus when we’re talking about using these things. So again, isolation exercises are usually where I’m putting these in. And the way that these work is instead of dropping the load after you do that kind of first set, maybe you’ve got one or two left or maybe you take it to failure.
Instead, you keep the weight the same and I would rest, instead of going immediately and dropping, I usually would rest somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds and then I will do another set. And it depends how high the reps were on that first set, but let’s say I’m somewhere in like the eight to 15 zone. Usually if I’m resting 15 to 30 seconds and I’m keeping the weight the same, I’ll be able to get another three to five reps on that exercise.
And so I’ll just repeat that. So I’ll do my set, let’s say I get 12 reps on my first set, I’ll rest 30 seconds, maybe I’ll get another three, rest another 30 seconds, maybe I’ll get another three and maybe it’s like three, three, three, three for those four of my reps sets. Those reps are all super intense because they’re all very close to failure.
So they’re still providing an effective dosage, effective stress to our muscles and effective stimulus. And it’s a really great way to save time. So I’ve been doing that on curls, push downs, overhead extensions, calves, abs.
I’ve been doing that a lot of different of those kind of more isolation exercises. I don’t really use them a ton in my lower body training. You could use them for like leg extensions and leg curls and maybe adductors, stuff like that.
But most of my lower body, and I also am not a huge, I’d love to know your thoughts on this, but I rarely ever use rest pause or drop sets on my back training. I’ve just found for back that they’re, I don’t know why it is, but they just don’t seem to be as effective for me. I think part of the reason it might be is because a lot of my back training, I’m using a lot of partials.
So if I’m trying to do mile reps with partials, it just ends up being this weird like, okay, I’m doing these three or five reps, but they’re already kind of just like barely moving sort of thing. So I don’t know, it’s just, that’s the one muscle group that I’ve never really found it to be that useful for. Like maybe I could see it if I was doing like a straight arm pull down or something like that with a rope or a bar on the cable stack.
Like that’s kind of an isolation for the lats. So maybe I could see it there. But usually, yeah, back and legs, I’m not using it as much.
It’s more for like arms. I also don’t really use it for chest. I keep my, you know, my compound presses.
I don’t really use it. I don’t really use it for pressing. So yeah, pressing and pulling, I guess I don’t really use it for, but most isolation stuff for single joint movements are where I find it to be the most useful.
[Sawyer]I think that makes sense, especially because of the fatigue induced by those kinds of exercises too is probably a factor in some degree. But I’m curious, do you, when you’re resting in between those mile reps, are you resting like in a stretched position with the weight or are you just like putting it down completely and then, okay, okay.
[Ben]Yeah.
[Sawyer]Cool. That makes sense because yeah, you’re trying to get quality reps, but just not give as much time for like, you’re just kind of chopping up the rest basically and doing, trying to do the most intense. I get it.
[Ben]It’s like you’re getting rid of like those. I mean, let’s say you’re doing a set of 12. The first eight reps or so still are gonna be difficult, but they’re not gonna be nearly as difficult as the last four.
So it’s almost like you’re bypassing those lead in reps and you’re just, you know, you’re just getting to the kind of the meat and potatoes. You’re just getting to those final few challenging reps. So it’s hard.
You have to really kind of stay switched on for it and focused. But I do like the fact that, you know, I start my upper body days with like two presses. Those are straight sets.
And then after that, it’s all like my rep work. So I really kind of have to stay focused and tuned in for the rest of my workout, which I do like.
[Sawyer]Yeah. Yeah, no, I haven’t done that much experimenting with it. So I can’t comment too much on my reps, but I do find it really interesting.
And yeah, I know maybe, especially because you’re doing my programming now, I’m really curious to see when we go into a bulk and I have all these different upper body muscles that I really wanna work on, what that’s gonna look like in terms of programming, because yeah, like it can just add up quickly. You know what I mean? So if you can find any ways to save time, even if you love training and you’re fine with like, you know, hour and a half, two hour workouts sometimes, it can just, it just adds up, man.
You don’t wanna do that too, too often. Like, I think if I have like a really solid two hour session, like once a week, that’s great. But more than that, it starts to feel like, okay, this is a lot, you know?
Even if I can recover from it and everything, it’s just like a big imposition on your day, you know? So it’s cool that you found a way to like, skip past some of these, you know, just kind of getting the reps in. Cause it’s true, like, especially with certain isolations, like you can’t go super heavy without inducing a lot of joint stress too.
And so, yeah, I find that like, yeah, I’ll be doing preacher curls or whatever. And if I go heavier than a certain amount, then it really kind of starts messing with my elbows. But if I go light enough, I just feel like I’m doing like fluff reps until I get to the finally like, the reps that we know matter the most, which is those ones close to failure.
So I feel like, yeah, you’re a little bit limited in those by the straight sets. So it makes sense to me why my reps would be helpful in those situations. Whereas joint stress isn’t really as much of a concern with compounds, like big, heavy compounds.
[Ben]Absolutely. Well, that was pretty much all I had on my mind in terms of like things that are relevant when people are thinking about ways to save time in the gym, get more work in and less time if that’s what they need. Was there anything else that you wanted to discuss or that you had written down when it comes to this topic?
[Sawyer]We touched on most things. I think one thing, a couple more things that I had written down were like circuits. You can do circuit training.
Some people find that a lot more, especially the more endurance type athletes tend to find that more stimulating in terms of like, instead of doing just super sets back and forth between two exercises, you go kind of down a list. And I’ve given that to people who say that they’re kind of bored by workouts with too many straight sets or even super sets. And so I’ll give them kind of like, I don’t know, five or six exercises they’re gonna do in a workout.
And as long as they’re getting enough rest in between to not be out of breath before the next exercise, then that’s fine. Because most of the time I’m stacking, like it’s usually gonna be like a full body workout. Like it’s gonna be like upper, lower, upper, lower in exercise order.
So they kind of are getting rest in between. And I don’t know if I would say this is like the best training technique because you’re probably by the end of that whole thing, no matter how much like 30 second breaks or whatever you’re taking, you’re probably gonna take a hit in terms of quality. But I think it’s much more useful if somebody’s having trouble staying focused for an entire workout.
Like they get distracted, they get bored, they cut their workouts early. This is a technique or a way of programming that keeps people engaged because it’s like, oh, you gotta just like dot, dot, dot down the line, like keep doing it. So I do that for people who just find that workouts that feel like, you know, just kind of sitting around is kind of really boring.
I much prefer that they just go down the line and even if the quality is not as good, they’re getting it in and then try to encourage them to like not be out of breath hopefully by the time they get to those last sets. And then on the same note, kind of is just shorter rest times in general. Just being like, okay, ideally you would wait until your muscles are stopped burning, your breath is no longer labored and you feel like you can get a close number to what you first got like for the first set.
But if somebody again, if it’s just like bored waiting around, they feel like they disengage when they wait around too long or they’re just super limited on time and they have a lot of volume to get in. They don’t necessarily wanna switch back and forth between things. Maybe they’re at a commercial gym and they feel bad doing that.
You know, maybe going a minute or a minute and a half between sets isn’t the worst thing. And eventually probably their cardio will get better and that will be less of a limiting factor too. You know, I think we have to be flexible as coaches when you realize like, oh, if I try to like do everything by the book or like optimally, this person doesn’t do it.
Like it doesn’t happen and it’s not fun for them. If you don’t find a way to make it fun, I don’t care how like optimally you programmed, it’s not gonna stick around that long. And I don’t mean like they’re like, ha ha, this is amazing the whole time, but they feel engaged.
They feel like proud of themselves while they’re doing it. It feels like exciting to them at some level, even if it’s not always the best feeling. You gotta find a balance of like what’s optimal and what somebody really likes or like can keep doing sustainably at least and kind of pick a point on that spectrum.
But yeah, in general people will build muscle pretty well as long as they are getting stronger over time. And even if it’s not the most efficient route to that, I still think it’s worth looking at, okay, what are some ways we can make it more engaging for you?
[Ben]Great, great points and great kind of practical take home. I think if you are gonna do shorter rest times, usually kind of similar to the intensity techniques that we talked about, you might need to do a couple more sets just because each set is probably gonna be a little bit less stimulative, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, it’s just an adjustment of these different things, right?
So if the training stress is less from each of those sets, you might need to do a little bit more, but you’re saving time either way doing that, you know, just by virtue of the fact that you’re not resting as long. So really just depends on personal preferences, what you like, no matter kind of what your life circumstance or setup is that you can find a way to fit it in. It is important, you know, for you and whatever goals you’re working towards, whether those be health goals, aesthetic goals, whatever it is that you are trying to progress in, there’s a way to, you know, manipulate these different variables.
And if you’re not sure exactly how to manipulate those variables, if you’re, you know, finding yourself lost when it comes to programming with your training and kind of figuring out how to fit all these different variables in, that’s what we do at Vegan Proteins. We’re coaches, as we’ve mentioned throughout this podcast. A lot of this, you know, these experiences are informed by the work that we do with clients.
So if you’re interested in learning more about that, you can check the description down below. There’ll be a link where you can learn more about coaching. You can head over to veganproteins.com and fill out an application. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours. And you can also find us on social media at veganproteins at Muscles by Brussels. You can find Sawyer at Soyboy Fitness Coaching and myself at Ben A.
Mitchell. If you have enjoyed this podcast, it would be super helpful if you could leave a review, if you’re listening over on Apple Podcasts, or you could give us a five-star rating on Spotify. Super helpful, of course, always sharing the podcast with other people, sharing on your stories.
If you tag us, we will certainly reshare and just kind of spreading the good word if you’re finding this podcast to be informative and helpful. So thank you again for listening to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels. My name is Ben.
And I’m Sawyer. And we’ll see you on the next one. Bye guys.
Bye.
